A Set of Lies

by Carolyn McCrae

  On the morning of the first day of August 1815 the General did not appear, as had become his routine, at breakfast on the Bellerophon. His valet, Bertrand, excused his master to the ship’s officers, saying he was unwell and would keep to his cabin for the day. A member of the crew was suspicious and arranged for a midshipman to be suspended from the deck to peer in at the windows of their prisoner’s cabin to ensure he had not dived into the sea. The midshipman reported that the General was, indeed, in his cabin but he was not seen by any man who knew him before he was transferred to the Northumberland for the voyage to Saint Helena.

  Not one of the carefully chosen crew of the Northumberland had any reason to believe that the man who bore every resemblance to the Boney they had seen caricatured in the news sheets, the man who could one minute be completely charming and the next unutterably arrogant, the man who charmed women and sired a child on the voyage, was not the man his escorts, his secretaries, his doctors and all the others who had given up their lives to share their Emperor’s exile said he was.

  *

  Sir Bernard took no pleasure in remembering how the Duke had been in the years that followed. He had given his enthusiastic support once it appeared the scheme could succeed and he had reaped the benefits of that success as he embarked on his career as a politician.

  Once the Duke had become Prime Minister however, he had been in a position to wipe history’s slate clean of any reference to what had occurred.

  Chapter 22

  The Third Wednesday 7pm

  There had been fifty sheets in the two folders. Some were double-sided so Margaret had to deal with seventy-eight pages of code. Progress had been slow initially but once she had input the ciphers into her computer each page had taken little more than an hour.

  At the end of each day she had handed her handwritten notes to Skye, who typed them up.

  As the days went by Skye told Carl that she thought the pages had been shuffled as the narrative did not seem to progress along any sensible timeline. One day she was in the Peninsula, the next in Cornwall, the next in Paris, the next in Vienna, the next describing trips to St Helena and to London, then she would receive a page describing a picnic on Freshwater Down, just five miles from The Lodge.

  “We’ll wait until it’s all done before we read it. Then we can fit the pages together like a jigsaw,” Carl decided.

  At the end of Margaret’s eleventh day and the seventeenth since Carl had driven to the island, with only five days before Skye had to leave The Lodge, Margaret completed work on the pages in the two coded folders. She, with Carl and Fergal, joined Skye in the kitchen as Skye typed up the last page.

  “That’s it then,” she said as she saved the document.

  “That, my dear girl, is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

  “Churchill?”

  “Inevitably.”

  The four sat around the kitchen table, unable to start the conversation that would mark the beginning of the next stage of their researches.

  Margaret broke the silence. “I understand now why there was so much secrecy.”

  “You do?”

  “What we have here is, perhaps, as dangerous a text as is possible to imagine.

  “Dangerous?” Carl asked.

  “Dangerous,” Maggie repeated firmly. “And you’ve known what this is all about all along haven’t you?” she accused.

  “We had no proof,” Carl eventually answered.

  “We do now,” said Skye firmly. “Once we’ve put the jigsaw together it will confirm everything. Sir Bernard was an agent, he found a double for Napoleon, the double was substituted and sent to St Helena, and the original came to live here as Claude Olivierre while he did what the British wanted him to do which was to save the country from revolution and war.”

  “This is what you expected?” Maggie asked.

  “It was what we have been hoping for,” Carl answered. “It was what we have strongly suspected but which we had no way of proving.”

  “You must have someone else check my decryption.”

  “It looks pretty OK to me,” Skye suggested. “I mean, everything I’ve typed up makes sense.”

  “But we must have someone else do it, in controlled conditions.”

  “But we have the proof.” Fergal sat back in his seat. “Now what the fuck do we do with it?”

  It was again Margaret who broke the silence that followed.

  “You know there is an awful lot that’s relevant to modern politics in all this. Sir Bernard has written a great deal about managing the population in the face of possible revolution at home by building up enemies, bogeymen if you like, abroad.”

  “Now where have I heard that used in recent years?” Fergal asked, his voice filled with dry sarcasm.

  “Bush? Blair? Cameron?”

  “And a fair few others over the years.”

  “The writer clearly advocates the need to take the people’s minds off something the powers-that-be don’t want them to think about by filling their minds with fears they believe they can manage.”

  “Like the BBC filling its news programmes with things going wrong in the health service and that eating anything leads to cancer?” Skye suggested.

  “Exactly,” Maggie agreed. “If the newspapers and television news and radio phone-ins are filled with things that can be controlled then the ignorant population won’t start worrying about other, more important, matters.”

  Carl agreed completely with what Margaret was saying. “You’re very cynical but probably not far wrong. What made you think about all this? What did Sir Bernard have to say about controlling people’s fears?”

  Skye found the right passage in Maggie’s notes and began to read in as bland a voice as she could. “For years war against France had had its uses. Boney was the enemy of all Englishmen and that united Englishmen even though, in truth, Englishmen were anything but united.

  “On the one hand were men, women and children who undertook whatever work they could find to put food on their tables. On the other were those whose centuries-long hold on land had made them rich through the efforts of their tenants, and also those made newly rich by the efforts of their workers in manufactories. Through those long years of war there was one fear preventing revolution, such as had occurred in France, from spreading through the streets of our English cities and that was fear of invasion. And that fear was Boney.

  “We worried what would happen when there was no longer the unifying threat of foreign invasion. The price of bread would rise, families would go hungry, men would remember their inequalities and seek to redress imbalances.

  “There were rich sympathisers of Bonaparte safe in their mansions in London, who recruited and funded agitators who would get amongst men who had been obedient in their fight against a foreign enemy. These agitators encouraged men to stand together and fight against those who kept them in their poverty. They would stand on street corners in the industrial centres of the north telling men who were hungry that, if only they fought together against the mine and the mill owners, they would be free and their families would be fed. These agitators would make men afraid, not for their country, but for themselves and we knew that when men are afraid for themselves they become angry and their frustration turns them violently against all authority. We feared civil war, not between Catholic and Protestant as before in England’s history; not between the populace and the nobility as in France; but, incited and bankrolled by those wealthy Bonapartists, the poor would rise up against whoever was richer than they.

  “The dread of Napoleon Bonaparte would soon fade in the minds of Englishmen, no one would be kept from the barricades for fear of the actions of a defeated man. And we knew that, one day, we would defeat him.

  “We enlisted the support of the only man who would influence these Bonapartist agitators, a man no longer a revolutionary but one who supported law and order and who believed in strong and purposeful governm
ent. Those men and women, sitting, plotting, in their drawing rooms and salons in Mayfair and St James’s, besotted by a false and idealistic view of Bonapartism, would be influenced only by the General himself.

  “We had him speak for order against revolution, for evolution not revolution in social relations. And when they visited him through those long weeks on the Bellepheron anchored in the harbour of Plymouth they listened.

  “So we have much to thank the man for. Not only the prospect of peace on the Continent of Europe through the intelligence he has given us on our enemies, but also the enhanced prospect of a peaceful route to reform in our country.”

  “Good God. They were dangerous games,” Carl whispered.

  “Have you any idea of the importance of the contents of these books?” Margaret asked seriously. “What Skye has just read is the tip of the iceberg. There are names, places, dates, brief summaries of meetings, descriptions of what he meant by ‘intelligence’. Have you any idea?”

  Carl nodded slowly. “Yes, Maggie, I think we have.”

  “It’s dynamite. And it’s nothing whatsoever to do with 1915. Where did that date come from?”

  “It was the date the writer hoped the papers would have been found and read.”

  “Is it fiction?”

  “Does it read like fiction?”

  “No,” Maggie admitted. “I have to say it doesn’t but if someone said it was fiction no one would believe it was credible. How the hell did they expect to get away with it?”

  Skye found the page on her screen.

  “There was complete faith in the entourage that accompanied Ennor Jolliffe to Saint Helena. There were the Emperor’s close personal servants, his doctor, his secretary, his adjutant, all of whom had promised to go to their graves with the secret to ensure the freedom and happiness of their Emperor. Count de Las Cases was of particular use. Others who surrounded the exile were the men and women selected by myself. Who was Count de Las Cases?” Skye interrupted herself to ask.

  “Las Cases is a well-known figure. He was close to Napoleon and it is said that it was he who persuaded the Emperor to surrender to Maitland on the Bellerophon. He and his son went to St Helena and both acted as the captive’s secretary, transcribing his writings, dealing with correspondence, deciding what the captive saw and what he did not. If he was in the pay of Lacey, and knew of the substitution, it would explain something of how they got away with it,” Carl answered. “Continue, Skye, please.”

  “But Saint Helena is no desert island. It is an important staging post on the route to India and the East. There is a large garrison to protect and defend the island, there is a small but not insignificant population that includes ambitious and unscrupulous traders who would be mischievous if they got wind of any trick. Altogether there were many hundreds of men and women to be deceived, any one of whom could guess the truth. It was necessary, in the first months of the deception, for me to visit the island several times and impose restraints on those considered a risk to the deception. On one such visit I successfully engineered the removal from the island of a most dangerous man, William Balcombe, on whose estate we had first billeted the exile. His housekeeper, an ill-tempered woman, was a particular worry but she was inclined to drink and it was unlikely, even had she ever said anything, that she would be believed. We could leave nothing to chance. On one of my regular visits to Whitehall it was decided to ensure our Cornishman was fed a regular supply of arsenic. This was to mirror the course a stomach cancer would take and eventually kill the prisoner in a manner that would appear natural. Nothing could be done too hastily. Six years was considered a reasonable time so that was the period through which the charade was to be maintained. For that period the threat of exile to Saint Helena could be held over my neighbour Claude Olivierre. If he reneged on any of our arrangements, if any of the information he provided proved to be inaccurate, if his cooperation ceased, then he would be sent to rot on that God-forsaken rock in the Atlantic and Ennor Jolliffe would be free to make the new life in America he had been promised would be his reward. Poor Ennor Jolliffe,” Skye said sympathetically as she looked away from the screen. “He was never going to be allowed to live was he?”

  “He only did what he had always known would be his fate, he died for his country. And doing what he did was of far more use than simply being cannon fodder on some battlefield in India or in Spain.” Carl’s tone was pragmatic.

  “And look where he’s ended up! In that enormous monument Les Invalides in Paris.” Fergal smiled broadly. “In a tomb, appropriately nameless because they couldn’t decide whether it should be ‘Napoleon’ as royalty would be remembered or ‘Napoleon Bonaparte’, that is, with his family name as any commoner.”

  Carl sat back, his eyes closed, his mind racing at the power of this knowledge as he listened to Skye.

  “At frequent intervals in those first years I instructed Olivierre to write letters that only he could have written, describing thoughts only he would have and events about which only he could have knowledge. Many would read the exile’s correspondence and any sign of anomaly would raise suspicions, especially in those early months. These letters were sent to the island on the regular supply ships, along with the pages of the memoirs that he was writing. I could not grieve for Ennor Jolliffe though we owed him everything. Perhaps, you who read this, will remember his sacrifice for without that we would not be in possession of the intelligences provided and revolutionary forces would not have been thwarted. I pray that peace has been sustained in Europe. If the world you who read this occupy is a peaceful one it is because of him. Ironic, that, isn’t it? I mean he’s expecting it all to be read in 1915 and that was hardly peaceful was it?” Skye didn’t expect anyone to answer.

  “I wonder what those intelligences could have been?” Margaret removed her glasses to emphasise her point. “I haven’t found anything that covered that.”

  “I doubt he would go against his oath of secrecy to that extent. Writing this must have been painful enough to his conscience.”

  “Whatever it was it will be hidden in the dark recesses of the archives in Kew.”

  “You should know, you work there.” Carl almost laughed.

  “But does it matter what it was? I mean, isn’t it enough to know that there certainly was some?” Skye pointed out. “Sir Bernard keeps referring to it and he would have said if there had been none.”

  “If there had been none then Claude would have been heading for St Helena wouldn’t he?” Fergal added.

  “And he was allowed to live out his life here in The Lodge wasn’t he? So there must have been important information…”

  “…not only about the plans of our enemies but of what our enemies knew of our plans.” Fergal completed Skye’s sentence for her.

  “Exactly,” concluded Carl.

  “But it didn’t keep the world safe did it?” Margaret added ruefully.

  “I think it did,” Carl said firmly, rather to Margaret’s surprise. “I have been thinking about that a great deal through the last few nights. I’ve stood on the balcony of my hotel room and looked out over the Solent, a crucial part of England’s moat, and I’ve thought about it. I’ve leant against the wall of a castle built five hundred years ago to keep the French out of the town they destroyed more than once and I have thought about it.”

  “When did Bernard die?” Skye asked, then looked down at her notes and answered her own question. “1832. What happened between 1815 and 1832? Were there fewer wars than in the preceding years? Oh, I wish I knew more about this!”

  “Obviously that is something that can be rectified.” Carl smiled. “Fergal, help our young friend out with some detail please.”

  “There were certainly wars, there is always war somewhere, but those that there were in the 1820s were in Africa and in the Colonies. There was very little in Europe except the Greek war of Independence and that was part of the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire that Bernard mentions as a principal enemy.”

 
“Don’t forget the failed Decembrist revolution in Imperial Russia in 1825,” Carl pointed out.

  “Another of their named potential enemies,” Fergal replied.

  Margaret and Skye sat back and listened as a smiling Fergal and a frowning Carl added circumstantial evidence to their hypothesis.

  “And then in 1828 Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire. Do you detect a pattern here?” Carl asked pointedly. “The enemies were being pitted against each other. Could, perhaps, there have been something or someone fomenting animosity between them?”

  “That would have been very devious.” Margaret sounded doubtful but was intrigued.

  “But it’s what our politicians do isn’t it? They identify two potential threats and then, somehow, get them to waste all their energies on fighting each other.” Skye wanted to add something to the debate.

  “All the engagements in Europe throughout the 1830s and 40s were pretty minor and Great Britain was on the victorious side in every one. Most importantly, for the first reasonable stretch of time in over a thousand years, we were not at war with the French. We haven’t been at war with France now for two hundred years.” Carl was enjoying himself. “Even forty years without being at war with France, or anyone else on the continent of Europe, was almost unprecedented,” he added with a wry smile.

  “We didn’t do particularly well in Afghanistan or South Africa in the late nineteenth century but Claude couldn’t have been expected to know much about those parts of the world. And the Russians and Ottomans were at war much of the time, weakening each other,” Fergal pointed out.

  “And we must not forget the other prong of Bernard’s ambition, the prevention of insurrection. For all the popular uprisings in Europe in 1848, the Year of Revolutions, there was no such difficulty in Britain. There was even civil war in Switzerland. But, discounting a tiny local uprising in Ireland, there was nothing at all in the British Isles.”